Overall I could not agree more with the author’s view and discipline. The power of the Software is that it is flexible. It is so flexible that it can be both‘implemented ‘ this way and ‘represented’ that way. In my opinion, rising of the interaction design field is based on the this characteristic, which can be problematic or helpful, depending on how well represented model is designed. Previously industrial design was enough. But the famous discipline of “Form follows a function.” is not directly applicable to the SW.

However, there is very interesting thing for me that I would like to share and get your guy’s opinion. At page 36, the author argues that “Mechanical-Age representations degrade user interaction.” However, in my opinion, the evolution of technology changed that it may not be the case.

For example, a tangible human-computer interaction can be successful, if it resembles mechanical-age metaphor. An multi-touch interaction, which is common nowadays, is a good example. For example, there is a photo viewing application that adopts an coffee table metaphor. Many photos are displayed in the table. The user rotates or zoom-in using hand gestures. It is successful, because it uses an established metaphor, which don’t need to be learned by user.

Some could argue that this established metaphor is not mechanical-age representation. Though judging whether something is of mechanical-age oriented or not can be quite difficult, I will give another example. In the book, address book is given as an example of mechanical-age thing. However in my opinion the iPhone address app is adopting the physical address book representation in their side tap.